Researcher Ruth Patrick examines the flawed assumptions behind policies intended to incentivise benefit recipients to take up paid work – and calls for a rethink

In a brief radio appearance recently, I was involved in a discussion about the role of welfare conditionality in today’s welfare state. One of the participants defended conditionality’s role, citing what he described as a wealth of evidence that suggests that conditionality does work in supporting transitions from ‘welfare’ into ‘work’. I responded emphasising the punitive edge that conditionality brings to encounters at the Job Centre or in employment ‘support’ provision, and how this can harm relationships between claimants and their advisers. But that was all I had time to say.

Leaving the radio studio, my head swarmed with all the things I wished I’d added. All the reasons why welfare conditionality – as currently operating in the UK – is simply not working and instead so often causing significant hardship and even destitution. Based on my own research with single parents, disabled people and young jobseekers directly affected by welfare reform and welfare conditionality’s expansion, here are just five of the many more things I could (*should*) have said.

While welfare conditionality has always had a role in Britain’s benefit system, it is hard to overstate the intensification and extension of its application over the past 35 years. Today, we have what WelCond researchers Sharon Wright and Peter Dwyer call ‘ubiquitous conditionality’, with work-related conditionality entrenching ever further into social security delivery and receipt. This sees groups targeted with conditionality who arguably should not be, for example single parents with young children, those already in work (but judged not to be working, or earning, enough) as well as disabled people with some limited capability to work. This policy approach stresses the importance of paid employment, and crowds out other kinds of contribution such as parenting, care work and volunteering.

The evidence on conditionality’s effectiveness is anything but conclusive. As the emergent findings from the Welfare Conditionality project conclude, there is little evidence that conditionality in general – and sanctions in particular – support or enable transitions into work.

Linked to this, intensive and extensive work-related conditionality is based on a set of flimsy assumptions, assumptions that are not supported by the available research and evidence base. These include the idea that people on benefits need the threat of sanctions to ‘incentivise’ transitions into work (when in fact claimants most often want to engage in paid employment, where it is a realistic option) and the assumption that the ‘problem’ of unemployment lies at the individual rather than the structural level. The corrective lens is then incorrectly directed towards individual claimants, rather than looking to broader structural factors such as the nature of the paid labour market, (in)availability of appropriate child care and so on.

Conditionality is often counter-productive in operating to push people further away from, rather than closer to, the paid labour market. For the participants in my study, sanctions often meant that individuals were busy looking for food rather than work, or ended up so hungry and physically emaciated that they were quickly discounted as unemployable by prospective employers. Further, the negative impact sanctions – and their threat – had on individuals’ mental health and self-confidence also affected participants’ ‘work readiness’.

Too often, there is a mismatch between how conditionality is applied and understood by different agencies within the welfare state. For instance, a disabled person may be judged fit for work, and then expected to seek work as a condition of continuing to receive their benefits. However, when she presents at the Job Centre or at a compulsory employment programme, advisers may judge her too ill to comply with available support. That can lead to her being ‘parked’ and yet still part of the conditionality regime (and potentially subject to the full gamut of conditions, and potentially sanctions).

I could go on. And on. But these are just five of the many more reasons why we need to rethink conditionality’s role if we are to build a social security system that works for us all.

Ruth Patrick is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Law and Social Justice at the University of Liverpool. She is the author of ‘For whose benefit? The everyday realities of welfare reform’.

2 Responses to Why conditionality isn’t working

Council tax & rent arrears, and other debts, pile up during a one or three month sanction and are then enforced for further months when the sanction ends. The punishment rolls on with further health consequences for months/years

And yet David Gauke speaking to Andrew Marr this morning defends the principle of welfare conditionality, conveniently ignoring the actual evidence regarding how the sanctions regime is currently operating and the impact this has on so many lives. The very opposite impact his department are striving for. It hurts my brain.

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You also have an exact and clear idea of how all this affects people who are actually caught up in it. Unfortunately, the people who are responsible for these policies and decisions have never had to deal with it so there is no understanding and no empathy. We are losing our humanity in today's society.

Why would people then bother to make a home and spend money on it? We have to get away from this mindset that has now taken hold that Social Housing.....hate that term, is just temporary to suit your immediate needs. People should not have to up sticks all the time because a child gets older etc. When the old system was in place ie older people with larger homes than they needed they were offered incentives to downsize. In the 90's more Older peoples accommodation was built. Bungalows, Sheltered Housing etc. People were given help with removal costs. This has all changed. To make someone move from a home they have been in for years is cruel if it is not voluntary. I have been in my home since it was built. My daughter moved out as she should when grown up to make her own home. So after 23 years with roots well and truly down, should I be made to move? I have my granddaughter to stay. My daughter's room is now for her and was also an office when I worked from home. I could not fit my home into a small 1 bedroom flat. I do not want people living above me. This idea that if you live in Social Housing it is just accommodation but if you own it is your home is totally wrong. My parents moved willingly into Sheltered Housing but the change affected them drastically. My dad became stressed and ill and died a year later and my mother never settled and died a few years later. This was because they uprooted themselves and left their home and all the memories and familiar surroundings. Unfortunately like most issues these days, the humanity is being taken out of it.

Great resources on linking welfare sanction and conditionally and key social policy considerations with human rights principles (including dignity, non-discrimination). These considerations have a huge impact in narratives around poverty and vulnerability, and should be closely looked at by policy decision-makers and street-level bureaucrats.

Ok. I don’t agree with the bedroom tax but I do feel it would be a better option if housing rules were changed. For example why do they wait until kids are over 10 until giving families two bedrooms?
Then I also think housing should be fit for purpose so I believe when they move someone from a one bedroom to a 2 or 3 it should be with the understanding only until the children grow up and leave home then they should have their Tennancy moved back to something more suitable again like a one bedroom.

A fine well written and clear example of what is broken in our welfare system.
They are asking for submission for the next select committee meeting on welfare and I would submit this post if it were my choice.
It is a vicious cycle for some who have no chance of finding work however hard they might try. It is the employers who ultimately make the decision if employees are fit and ready to work, not the DWP.
Having a budget of £2 per day for food , job searching activities, keeping your appearance and strength up, and having to jump through hoops and tick boxes on all those strength zapping, soul destroying schemes courses and programs that do nothing but heap yet even more pressure and stress.
The affects of stress on both mental and physical health are well documented and nothing can be more stressful than not knowing week in, week out, that your hand to mouth existence is constantly at risk.
Sanctions are death sentences for some, no getting away from that fact, those charged with administrating the regime should hang their heads in shame, it is those who should make the stand to bring about change.
Or do they deceive themselves into believing long time shirker Jim who they sanctioned last month and who has not been seen again at the local JCP, Is now enjoying the fruits of his labor thanks to the Works Coaches helpful push they so desperately needed.
So clearly sanctions work and a good done job done by me, high five everyone.